Church Dogmatics vol 4 pt 2: The Doctrine of Reconciliation

CHURCH DOGMATICS BY

KARL BARTH VOLUME IV

THE DOCTRINE OF RECONCILIATION PART TWO

EDITORS REV. G. W. BROMILEY, PH.D., D.LITT. REV. PROF. T. F. TORRANCE, D.D., D.THEOL.

EDINBURGH:

T. & T. CLARK, 38

GEORGE STREET

THE DOCTRINE OF RECONCILIAT I ON (Church Dogmatics, Volume IV, 2)

BY

KARL BARTH, DR.THEOL., D.D., LL.D.

TRANSLATOR

REV. G. W. BROMILEY, PH.D., D.Lrrr.

EDINBURGH:

T. & T. CLARK, 38

GEORGE STREET

Original German Edition

EDITORS' PREFACE

DIE KIRCHLICHE DOGMATIK, IV:

Die Lehre von der Versohnung,

2

Published by EVANGELISCHER VERLAG A.G. ZOLLIKON-ZURICH

Authorised English Translation

©

1958

T. & T. CLARK EDINBURGH

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READERS of this second part-volume of Barth's Doctrine of Reconciliation are directed to the initial survey in the first (G.D., IV, r, pp. 79 ff.). The threefold content of the doctrine is there described as the knowledge of Jesus Christ (r) as very God humbling Himself to reconcile, (2) as very man exalted and reconciled, and (3) as God-man, guaranteeing and attesting reconciliation. What we now have is an outworking of the second of these themes in terms of the kingly work of Christ, as compared with His high-priestly work in the first and prophetic in the third. The exposition corresponds closely to that of the previous part. To the downward movement of Christ in contrast to our pride there now answers an upward movement in contrast to our sloth. Subjectively realised by the Holy Spirit as a divine direction, this carries with it the sanctification of man worked out in the upbuilding of the community and Christian love. The schematic parallelism does not mean that Barth is dividing the reconciling work of Christ into different or successive actions. As he lays constant stress on the unity of the person and work of Christ, he makes it quite clear that the downward and upward movement of the Son, the divine verdict and the divine direction, justification and sanctification, gathering and upbuilding, faith and love, are only different aspects of one and the same thing. The one person of the incarnate and exalted Son is the basis of this unity of the whole reality of our reconciliation in Him. The account of Christ's exaltation as the royal man leads us in this volume to a full consideration (r) of Chalcel10nian Christology, and (2) of the historical figure of Jesus as presented in the Gospels. Concerning the first, it is to be noted that, although Barth tries to choose new phraseology, he keeps closely to the detailed formulations of Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxy, yet lifts them up into a new significance by the thoroughgoing integration of Christology and soteriology. In the second We are given a notable example of synoptic exposition controlled by the true subject of the narratives, and not by questions or assumptions alien to their proper purpose. The transitional discussion in § 66 is perhaps the most complicated and elusive in the whole volume, wrestling as it does with the mystery and miracle of the Holy Spirit. Yet it is also in many ways the most rewarding. It establishes the link between the exaltation and sanctification already accomplished for us in virtue of Christ's union with and presence among us as the royal man, and our participation in this exaltation and sanctification as a community and as individual vii

Editors' Preface

Vlll

Christians. This link is particularly important in relation to the Church, for it means that ecclesiology is given a firm root in the one reconciling work of God as the humiliation of the Son of God and exaltation of the Son of Man. It is from this basis, and from its calling to be a provisional representation of the new humanity in the midst of the old, that the Church learns its true nature and order. Similarly, it is from this basis and calling that believers learn the meaning and manner of Christian love. The present volume makes no concessions to those who are not ready to work at their theology, and thus take up the fashionable complaint at Barth's verbosity which, in indirect tribute to the translators, now seems to have ousted the earlier charge of obscurity. The reasons for Barth's expansiveness have already been given in the Preface to I, 2, and need not be repeated. But the following points should be remembered. First, Barth is virtually giving us a series of commentaries, a history of dogmatics and a full-scale ethical treatise as well as a theology. Second, his work is really more compact than that of some of his great patristic, medireval and reformed predecessors. And third, he is studying an inexhaustible theme commanding an exhaustive attention which can finally exhaust itself only in prayer and praise. There are rhetorical passages, and these give force and colour to the whole. But what may seem to be tedious, laboured or repetitive will usually have rich rewards for those willing to give the time and effort demanded. In the preparation of this volume we are again indebted to the vigilant eye and caustic pencil of our assistant, the Rev. T. H. L. Parker, and to the enthusiastic and competent co-operation of our publishers and printers. EDINBURGH,

Easter 1958.

PREFACE I AM sorry to have disappointed those (perhaps not a few) who had counted on taking this continuation of the Church Dogmatics with them on their summer or autumn holidays. In view of the particularly outstanding size of this further part-volume, it would have provided very troublesome reading, but after all nothing has come of it. Well, I now have to accept without complaint or contradiction the fact that I am sometimes called" the old man in Basel," so I can only ask that I may have the indulgence of such if I fail to produce with the regularity of clockwork. I could not do this, indeed, even when I was younger. I can only say that I have the best will in the world to press on, but have been burdened with the responsibility of a task which this time was too much for me, and found it impossible to finish it earlier. To finish it? I doubt whether I have really finished with this part any more than I have with the whole. Those who have so kindly waited for the volume will surely find some other time for it, and if they read it as it was written they will appreciate how fine a thing it is to be occupied with this great matter, and not by a long way to have finished with it. What I am now seen to represent may provoke-glad or angry.surprise in some circles, as ha'3 occasionally happened before on the long journey of the Church Dogmatics. Those who still find its essence (perhaps as a result of the confusion caused by my Epistle to the Romans of 1921) in the alternative: Either the ascent of man to God or the descent of God to man, or who imagine (to their satisfaction or annoyance) that even in the first part of this fourth volume they can see little or nothing of the renovating work of the Holy Spirit, of the raising of man, of his participation in the event of reconciliation, of sanctification and love, will now have to reckon with the fact that this aspect of the matter is treated in great detail and at great length. The content of this book might well be regarded as an attempted Evangelical answer to the Marian dogma of Romanism-both old and new. I have nowhere mentioned this, let alone attacked it directly. But I have in fact shown that it is made superfluous by the" Exaltation of the Son of Man" and its anthropological implications. I can hardly expect that my Roman Catholic readers-to whom I turn more and more in the Church Dogmatics-will accept this, but I am confident that they will at least see that there is a positive reason f0r my Evangelical rejection. The fact that the man Jesus is the whole basis and power and guarantee of our exaltation means that there can be no place for any other in this function, not even for the ix

x

j)reface

mother of Jesus. I have not made this particular delimitation in the text but I hope that in relation to Roman Catholic theology some contribution has been made to an understanding of what is there called" sanctifying grace." It is another question whether on our own side I have even remotely satisfied the concern of the Pietists and " Evangelical groups." To the best of my kno~ledge and cons~ien~e I have tried to do this, although I could not sImply adopt theIr VIew. If I am not mistaken, there is much more openness and thoughtfulness among them now than in the forms of doctrine and practice that I knew when I was younger-or thought I knew, for I am not ashamed to confess that I now understand them better than I did. But it will be quite right if they are not entirely satisfied, for at the decisive points they cannot fail to hear something of th.e rolling ~hund~r of the 19 21 Romans even in the more accommodatmg tones m whIch I now express the things which particularly affect them. But I seem to hear from one and another of my former friends and fellows the question whether in the aspect of the matter which is now to ~he forefront I have not gone too far in what I ascribe to man, rather hke an old lion who has finally learned to eat straw. Is there not obviously demanded of those who firmly take Luther as their starting-point what is to them the intolerable position which they saw outlined some twenty years ago when the inversion of the relationship of Law and Gospel was first articulated? Well, all this will appear in the book itself. It has not been my wish to disturb or annoy anyone. But again I have had no option. Perspicuous readers will surely notice that there is no break with the basic view which I have adopted since my parting from Liberalism, but only a mor~ consist~nt turn in its development. To make this clear, I had to glVe partlcularly careful expression to the christological section which stands at the hea~ and contains the whole in nuce, speaking as it does of the humamty of Jesus Christ. I cannot advise anyone to skip it either as a whole or in part in order to rush on as quickly as possible to what is said about sanctification, etc. For it is there-and this is true of every aspectthat the decisions are made. There is no legitimate way to an understanding of the Christian life than that which we enter there. As I see it, it is by the extent to which I have correctly described this that the book is to be judged. May I conclude with a more general observation-especially in view of a sentence which I came across some time ago-that" for the moment only the angels in heaven know where the way of this Chu~ch Dogmatics will finally lead." The writer presumably meant th~t ItS future way-on which there may well be some further surpnsescould easily end in the darkness of more or less serious heterodoxies or even heresies. Well, we shall have to hope for the best. I can certainly confirm his view to this extent. When I take up the theme of each part-volume, or even embark upon each new section, although

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xi

I kee~ to a ~eneral direction, only the angels in heaven do actually know m detaIl what form the material will take. But to me it is very comforting that the angels in heaven do know, and as far as I am concerned it is enough if I am clear that at each point I listen as unreservedly as possible to the witness of Scripture and as impartially as possible to that of the Church, and then consider and formulate whatever may be the result. I am, therefore, a continual learner, and in .consequence. the aspect of this Church Dogmatics is always that of qUIet but perSIstent movement. But is the same not true of the ~hurc~ !tself if i.t is n?t a de~d Church but a Church which is engaged m a hvmg conSIderatIon of ItS Lord? Would it not be abnormal if I were in a position to show the eternal mysteries, and the truths of the Christian faith as they are revealed in time, like a film which has been taken and fixed, as though I were myself the master of them? Of course it would. Am I then groping in the dark? Is anything and everything possible? Not at all. In the twenty-three years since I started this work I have found myself so held and directed that, as far as I can see, there have so far been no important breaks or contradictions in the presentation; no retractations have been necessary (except in detail); and above all-for all the constant critical freedom which I have had to exercise in this respect-I have always found myself content with the broad lines of Christian tradition. That is how I myself see it, and it is my own view that my contemporaries (and even perhaps successors) ought to speak at least more circumspectly when at this point or that they think they have discovered a " new Barth," or, what is worse, a heresy which has seriously to be contested as such. Naturally, I do not regard myself as infallible. But there is perhaps more inward and outward continuity in the matter than some hasty observers and rash interjectors can at first sight credit. I must draw express attention at this stage to a rearrangement which is not as I see it of essential import. In the Introduction to IV, I, I had in mind that the doctrine of baptism and the Lord's Supper should be treated in the two first and constitutive parts of the doctrine of reconciliation (in each case in the sections on the Church). But on a nearer approach to the problems I have adopted a different COurse. And it will perhaps have been noted in Volumes II and III that I made less and less use-and finally none at all-of the general term" sacrament," which was so confidently bandied about in Volume 1. I cannot now explain the reasons for this rearrangement, because a brief statement would inevitably give rise to misunderstanding. I can ?nly indicate that here, if anywhere, I have learned to regard a cautlOus and respectful" demythologising " as expedient and practic~ble. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are given only incidental mention m the present volume. But they are not forgotten, and will be given what seems to be their appropriate and worthy place as the basis and

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Preface

crown of the fourth and ethical section of the doctrine of reconciliation. I know that this will expose me in advance to many suspicions. The Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung as well as the angels has long since known that this is how things would turn out. But I must bear this cheerfully, and with a good courage. In Geneva, Scotland, England and America, good heads and busy hands are at work translating the Church Dogmatics as a whole into French and English, and an obviously well-informed visitor from Japan tells me that a similar project is under consideration there. I give my greetings to all those who are selflessly prepared to devote so much of their time and energies to this task-and the courageous publishers whom they have found or will find-and I hope to know something of how the work will fare in these wider spheres. As I hurry to the end of this Preface, I must not forget to make some necessary amends. I am not referring to the strange (but not entirely novel) confusion which caused me (somewhere' in IV, I) to transport the land of Israel to the western shores of the Mediterranean. I am thinking rather of the fierce attack which I made on Dutch Neo-Calvinists in globo in the Preface to III, 4. The wrath of man seldom does that which is right in the sight of God, and never when it is in globo. I have to acknowledge this now that I have come to know the great book on myself and the Church Dogmatics by a representative of that group, G. C. Berkouwer (De Triomf de Genade in de Theologie van Karl Barth, 1954). For all its reservations and criticisms this work is written with such care and goodwill and Christian aequitas that-in the hope that there are others like its author-I should like to withdraw entirely the generalised and therefore ill-founded words which after many years of provocation I then suddenly unleashed. There are obviously" Fundamentalists" with whom one can discuss. Only butchers and cannibals are beyond the pale (e.g., the one who summarily described my theology as the worst heresy of any age), and even they only provisionally, for there is always hope that they will attain to a better mind and attitude. Those who were wounded then can take comfort in the fact that I myself have now come under the charge of " Fundamentalism," and indeed of an " existentialist Fundamentalism" (whatever that may be). And if in the future they do not say any more unseemly things about Mozart, they need have nothing to fear from me. When will the next volume appear? and how many more are there to be ?-are questions which I always hear soon after the publication of a new one. And one student asked me, in a well-chosen phrase, what is going to happen when" if I may be permitted to say so, you are no longer there"? He was quite right to remind me of this possibility. "Fast falls the eventide" is only too true of me, but I am still here and I will address myself at once to the next part, hoping only that the present one will be " thick" enough to spare me these

PreJace

1

xiii

questions for a littl~ time yet. The wider issue does not rest in our human hands a~d WIll declare itself in good time. f I am ?1 uch 1I1d.ebted to stud. theol. Hinrich Stoevesandt of Bremen or tec h meal help 111 the preparation of this volume. And as a final u~usual, but practical note, may I mention that aftebr October I of thIS year my address will no longer be Pilgerstrasse 25, ut Bruderholzallee 26 in Basel. GYRENBAD BEL TURBENTHAL

August, 1955.

(Kr.

ZURICH).

CONTENTS PAGE

EDITORS' PREFACE PREFACE

vii ix CHAPTER XV

JESUS CHRIST, THE SERVANT AS LORD

§ 64· THE EXALTATION OF THE SON OF MAN I. The.Second Problem of the Doctrine of Reconciliation 2. The Homecoming of the Son of Man 3· The Royal Man 4· The Direction of the Son

3 20

154 26 4

§ 65· THE SLOTH AND MISERY OF MAN

The Man of Sin in the Light of the Lordship of the Son of Man 2. The Sloth of Man 3· The Misery of Man I.

37 8 40 3 483

§ 66. THE SANCTIFICATION OF MAN I. Justification and Sanctification 2. The Holy One and the Saints 3· The Call to Discipleship 4· The Awakening to Conversion 5· The Praise of Works . 6. The Dignity of the Cross

499 5 II 533 553 5 84 59 8

§ 67· THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE UPBUILDING OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY 1. The True Church 2. The Growth of the Community 3· The Upholding of the Community 4· The Order of the Community

61 4 64 1 660 67 6

§ 68. THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRISTIAN LOVE 1. The Problem of Christian Love 2. The Basis of Love 3· The Act of Love 4· The Manner of Love

72 7 75 1 78 3 82 4

INDEXES 1. Scripture References II. Names . III. Subjects.

84 1 8.59 861

xv

CHAPTER XV

JESUS CHRIST, THE SERVANT AS LORD

CHAPTER XV

JESUS CHRIST, THE SERVANT AS LORD

THE EXALTATION OF THE SON OF MAN

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Lord who humbled Himself to be a servant, is also the Son of Man exalted as this servant to be the Lord, the new and true and royal man who participates in the being and life and lordship and act of God and honours and attests Him, and as such the Head and Representative and Saviour of all other men, the origin and content and norm of the divine direction given us in the work of the Holy Spirit. I.

THE SECOND PROBLEM OF THE DOCTRINE OF RECONCILIAnON

This chapter brings us to the beginning of a new book. The God who acts as Reconciler in Jesus Christ is one God, and so too is the man reconciled with Him in God. Similarly, the work of atonement which is His action is one. But the forms in which He and His act are revealed to us, the problems which have to be weighed and unfolded in dogmatics, cannot be treated at a single glance without violence, abbreviation and distortion. We cannot even know and confess the one God Himself except as the One who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our present movement is to the second problem of the doctrine of reconciliation. But if we are to understand this further step, a short introduction and transition is necessary (expanding the general lines indicated in C.D., IV, I, § 57). We begin with a retrospective glance. The first chapter of the doctrine of reconciliation now behind us had the title" Jesus Christ, the Lord as Servant." It treated of the atonement in its character as the free turning and condescension of God to the man who had turned away from Him and was therefore lost, of the grace of God in the fulfilment of His inconceivable self-offering to the cause of His unfaithful covenant-partner. \Ve recognised the true Godhead of Jesus Christ in the humility of the obedience in which He, the eternal Son of the eternal Father, humbled Himself in the omnipotence of His 3

§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man 4 mercy, and went into the far country, and was made flesh, and took our place as a servant in our cause, to fulfil the ineluctable judgment of God in our place and on our behalf, for the world and its salvation, by bowing Himself before it, and suffering on the cross the death to which we had fallen victim. We saw the verdict of God the Father pronounced in His resurrection from the dead-the revelation that the love of God for the world estranged from Himself attained its end in this His action and passion, that He, the humble servant of God, is our righteousness, i.e., that our wrong has been set aside in and with the judgment accomplished and suffered by Him, and our new right has been established in Him. As reflected in the existence and work of this servant of God, we understood the sin of man as the pride of man, and his justification as the wayan which--in both cases with the same unconditional certainty-his wrong has been borne away in Jesus Christ and is behind him, and his new right has been established in Jesus Christ and is before him in the forgiveness of his sins, his institution as a child of God, and the hope of eternal salvation. We understood the Christian community as the gathering by the Holy Spirit of those who believe in Jesus Christ, and therefore as the place where the judgment of God accomplished in His death and the verdict of God revealed in His resurrection, the sin of man and his justification, are known and acknowledged. Finally, we understood Christian faith as the free human act of this acknowledgment, recognition and confession as established by the Holy Spirit. On this first aspect the whole work of reconciliation has shown itself to be a mighty movement from above to below, i.e., from God to man, the reconstitution and renewal of the covenant between God and man under the sign of the first element in the gracious saying of the Old Testament: "I will be your God." As the Christian community, and in it Christian faith, may receive and affirm this" I will be your God," its own existence belongs to this first, objective aspect of the atonement, as itself the final moment in that movement from God to man. But in the Christian community and Christian faith there exists-representatively for all men everywhere-the Christian, and therefore man with his work as a partner of God. He is the man who acknowledges, recognises and confesses his being in Jesus Christ. But he is also the man who in his being in Jesus Christ is different from God. In his spontaneity as such he is an object, but he is more than that. For as an object of the truly and effectively reconciling grace of God, in his own particular, subordinate and secondary place and manner and function he is also a subject of this whole occurrence. As, at the end of that first line of the doctrine of reconciliation, we were confronted in the Christian community and Christian faith with the man reconciled with God in Jesus Christ, intimation was already given of the turn which we have now to make. It is the man reconciled with God in Jesus Christ who as such will

I.

The Second Problem of the Doctrine of Reconciliation

5

occupy us along this new line: the covenant man who faces the covenant God in the reconstitution and renewal of the covenant· the second element in that gracious saying of the Old Testament: '" Ye shall be r~y people"; the human answer to this divine pronouncement. ThI~ ~oes not mean that we must now turn our attention away from the dIvme work of atonement to another actuality to be known outside this work. There can be no question of a second truth side by side with the first. There is only the one mighty truth of the reconciliation of the world with God as it has taken place in Jesus Christ. We do not cease, but continue, to be occupied with this truth, and this alone. In the strict sense, we are not even dealing with another part of the one truth. It is indivisible. It would not be the truth in any of its forms if it were not the whole truth in each of them. Even the two elements in the gracious saying of the Old Testament do not attest the one whole grace of God only as they are taken together, but each does so in and for itself. To express it in terms of the Trinity, the Father and the Son are not the one true God only as they are eternally united, but each is the one true God in and for Himself. There can be no question, then, of leaving one sphere of the one whole grace of God and turning to another. It is a matter of doing justice to this grace, and therefore to the truth of the atonement as it claims us, in all its fulness. It is rich and varied in its unity, a.n~ must be estimated accordingl~. But we fail to do this if we try ngIdly to .see ?nly one aspect of It-that which has so far occupied us. And If thIS IS the case, however correct and true it may be in itself, even this aspect is all crooked and in the last resort false. The truth conceals itself from those who are not willing and ready to receive" grace for grace" (In. 1 16) from the fulness of the incarnate Word, who will not let themselves be led into" all truth" (In. 1613) by the Holy Ghost. If we want to know only one aspect of it, we h.ave already attempted to enclose it in the humanly made construchan of definite systematisation and conceptual schematisation. But it e.v,:des this atte~pt. As the action and work of God it is divinely hVIng truth. It IS the friend only of those who respect its freedom and are therefore free to follow it, to know it afresh-the one truth which is ;"ich in itself-in a new aspect. Therefore in the turn which we have now to exec~te there can be no question of seeing a new thing, but of seeing the old In ~ new way. We have not to consider a second thing, but the first one dIfferently. There is not another doctrine of reconciliation but a second problem of the doctrine (as there will later be a third). ' The one divine work of atonement has also to be seen and understood~an~ ~ot .merely incidentally and marginally, but with the same, If dIstInctIve, attention-in relation to the man to whom it ~pplies and on whose behalf, for whom and to whom and with whom, It to~k place: F?r man does not stand on the margin or outside the margm, but m hIS own order he is there with God at the very centre

6

§ 64. The Exaltation oj the Son oj Man

of this event. The covenant God is not alone, but with Him there is also the covenant people, and therefore the covenant man. The centre of this event is indeed that God was not content merely to be God, but that propter nos homines, and without ceasing to be God, He Himself became man in His Son: an Israelite, this Israelite, the Son of Abraham, David and Mary, and therefore the Son of Man, for the conversion of all men to Himself. We have seen what God did when He did this, and what it means for Him and as it was done by Him. We must now turn our attention, and give particular emphasis in our investigation and presentation, to what was done for and to and with man when God did this, and what it means for man. Now what was done to man, and the meaning for him of the divine work of atonement and therefore of the grace of God, is that, as God condescends and humbles Himself to man and becomes man, man himself is exalted, not as God or like God, but to God, being placed at His side, not in identity, but in true fellowship with Him, and becoming a new man in this exaltation and fellowship. It is true enough that the event of atonement is wholly and utterly a movement from above to below, of God to man. But it is also true that this truth encloses the further truth that the atonement is wholly and utterly a movement from below to above, the movement of reconciled man to God. It is true enough that it consists in the unity which God has established and maintains with sinful man in the sovereignty of His grace. But in and with this it is also true that there is this unity of man with God, the actual or virtual existence of the covenant people and covenant man, who (ordained to be this in the divine election, and made it by the work and Word of God) is the righteous partner of God. It is true enough that without the abasement which God elected for Himself when He became man, to make our cause His own and to prosecute it as ours, the judgment of man could have resulted only in his abandonment to the nothingness which he had chosen for himself, his eternal perdition. But it is also true that in and with His own abasement God has elected and achieved man's exaltation, that the telos of this judgment, in which God took it upon Himself, can be only the redemption of man-and more than that, the' creation and existence of the new man who is well-pleasing to God. This is the second theme and problem which we must now discuss as radically as possible. It is unavoidably posed by Holy Scripture as the witness of God's work and revelation of grace. If the Church hears the Word of God, it must also consider and answer this problem. If its proclamation is in order, it must also declare what is to be known and considered on this side. For the witness of Scripture very obviously refers us also to this aspect of the grace and truth of God. It speaks of the great acts of God among men, in the midst of His enemies,

for and to sinners, all of whom He consistently confronts as the One who alone

1.

The Second Problem oj the Doctrine oj Reconciliation

7

is truly righteous and holy.. But it also speaks of the difference made among and III these men, of what HIS acts really mean within the darkness which more or less thickly fil~s and surrounds them. In the Old Testament it gives us an account of the history of Israel, a people like all others, but as the Israel of God not just like all others. In the New Testament it tells of the developing (ommumty, a gathenng of J ews a~d Gentiles who are not in any sense unworldly III their form and manner of life III the world, but who are not simply worldlv. It is the record of particular men and women, the friends and servants and witnesses and emissaries of God, the prophets and apostles-all of them men yet all of them in their humanity called by the Word of God and touched and filled and changed and impelled by His Spirit. In all this the free sovereign grace of God IS all III all. Apart from it, there is nothing distinctive about Israel or the community, or these particular men and women Qf the Bible. But th~ Bible cannot speak about the free sovereign grace of God without distinguishing those whom it encounters, without drawing attention to .the fact that in its light and CIrcumference there anses a kmd of quahfied humamty--deep in the shadow of sin and death, fles.h like all flesh, not even remotely developed or comparable to the maJestym which God IS good and wise and powerful, yet in all its relativity a new humamty, the witness that the grace of God was not in vain (ou K€V~ 'y€V~(J'I, I Cor. 1510) to these men. In the Bible the self-exaltation of man is always a sin: :' And w~osoe:er shall exalt himself shall be abased" (Mt. 2312)and the question of hiS dlvlmsatlOn does not even arise. But there are men who are in different ways exalted by the grace of God. We cannot ignore this fact. Indeed, we are forced to take it very seriously. It is part of the revision and correction ,:"hich the .Church and its proclamation must always be ready to accept from Scnpture, of ItS onentatlOn to the total witness of the Bible that it should be willing .to fa~e the question whether and how tar it is willing ;nd prepared to take thiS senously and assert it both within itself and to the world. It does not know grace as a whole, which means that it does not know it at all if it tries to escape this side of its biblical attestation. ' Finally decisive for the necessity of putting this problem is the fact to which Old Testament history moves forward and from which New Testament historv derives-the form of the incarnate Word of God in the man Jesus of Nazareth. In this first section at the head of the new chapter we shall have to speak particularly of Him, and of HIS exaltation which is incomparable in relation to that of all others, but for that very reason typical and basic. How can we be obedient to Scripture, which calls Him the Son of Man as well as the Son of God, and has m H1S form and person its centre, goal and origin, if we are not ready to take It seriously, even in detail, as a record of the new man? The necessity to do this. obviously applies also and even primarily to dogmatlc~ as the sCience m which t~e Church has to measure its proclamation by the Word of God attested m Scnpture. The particular danger of dogmatics is to thmk schematically. And the specific danger of modern Evangelical dogmatics (unhke that of the two preceding centuries) is that it will overlook or fail to take senously the side of the biblical witness which concerns reconciled man as such:onstructing a doctrine of reconciliation in which the man reconciled with God IS basically absent, or at any rate invisible. But because the truth is indivisible this would mean that for all the art and eloquence with which it might turn t~ ~he reconciling God and His grace, it would not really speak of Him at all. And hiS must not happen at any cost. We have, therefore, to address ourselves to thiS second problem of reconciliation with no less attention than that which we devoted to the first.

The summons to do this is also sounded by the history of the exposition which the biblical witness has found in the doct~ine and practice of the ecumenical Church. The ecumenical Church-for at

8

§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man

this point it is incumbent that we should not try. to orie.nt~te. our doctrine merely by the normal forms of our EvangelIcal ChnstIamty. But are we not more likely to be frightened and held back as we consider the true history of the Church and theology? It is almost customary to-day to approach great tracts of traditional Christian theology and piety with an attitude which is from the. ver~ first reserved and critical and even mistrustful. Man as a subject m the great event of reconciliation? A line of thought from below to above, from man to God? The exaltation of man to God? The fellowship not only of God with man but man with Go.d? What kind of.acce.nts are these? What associations do they conjure up? What histoncal images, and with them what well-known and often mentioned dangers, are raised by them, and seem emphatically to warn us not to enter the way proposed? Is not this the way of theological humanis~, moralism, psychologism, synergism, and ultimately an anthropocentnc monism-a way which in the last thirty years Evangelical theology has scarcely begun to learn again to see and avoid in all its aridity? Is it not better to leave on the index-on which they had to be put for a while as the representatives of these errors (in order once and for all to exclude them)-the trends and aims and movements of the nearer and more distant past, with all their effects and continuations in the present, as they arise from a concern w~th this problem of t~e new and reconciled man? Are we not forbIdden to take up thIS question again when it is so obvious what dangers it has involved f~r so many and even the majority of those who have so far pursued It and who do so now, and what fatal result a concern with it see~s always to have entailed? Is not the supposed summons to take It up a temptation which we do well simply to avoid in view of a~l that happened in the 18th and 19th centuries, and further back m the Middle Ages and even in the Early Church, not to forget the constant warning of Roman Catholicism? It is as well that we should devote some serious consideration to this question. It is indeed the case that to-day we have emerged a little, but not decisively or finally, from the toils of the immanentist theology of the pious ~an which dominated the last two centuries and was secretly widespread even In the 17th century and that of the Reformation itself. In wide circles of the community and its prp-achers and even scientific theology the necessary movement of l~bera­ tion has not yet been made, and the lesson has not yet been learned that In t~e first place we must think from God to man (as we ourselves have tned to do m the preceding chapter). And who is to boast that h~ has really l~arne.d thiS lesson and can make the movement with any certamty? The InvaSion of theology by existentialism, the naivety with which optimistic y~uth especially has failed to recognise the old enemy in this new garb, has plamly shown us how basically adapted we are to prefer an approach which necessarily ir:volves the denial of the primacy of God over man, if not of God altogether, a~ ItS presupposition no less than its consequence, so that the whole problem of our first chapter, to know the turning, the gracious condesce~sion o~ God to man, and His decisive intervention for him, is made quite Impossible. And Roman

1.

The Second Problem of the Doctrine of Reconciliation

9

Catholicism still warns or entices us as the classical compendium of all these errors-Its constant temptation consisting in its unabashed preference for the prob.lem whl~h we are now a~out to take up. This being the case, the question mevltably anses whether It IS not too soon and inopportune, or even basically mistaken, to take this course. It is quite incontestable that the history and present state of the problem challenge us to the greatest vigilance and circumspection. There is indeed an element of risk in this diversion of attention to the question of the man reconciled with God. It is true enough that time and again this way has involved the most senous consequences, and that this is particularly true of the centuries from which we have just come, in which the problem that we call the" second" was treated as the first and only problem, the attempt being made to schematise theology according to a view and concept of reconciled man-an attempt which was bound to lead fin.ally to the impasse in which Evangelical theology found Itself about 1910. It IS true enough that new sources of error of this type have continually broken out and spilled abroad, and that the man reconciled with God by God has often become a man reconciling himself with himself, the religious man, self-c~mplacent and self-explained. It is true enough that even to-day thiS danger IS not In any sense remote, least of all where it is thought that there are adequate safegu~rds again~t it. It is true enough that once we begin to look, let alone to thmk, In thiS way we shall immediately detect the sinister lea~en-recognisedperhaps, but even worse unrecognised-of Roman Catholicism, which seems to be most at home in this sphere.

We certainly cannot say that it is impossible, and excluded, that those who take this way will be tempted and finally fall. In the attempt to understand the grace of God as the grace which is addressed to maJ.! and exalts and changes a~d renews him, the perception of the sovereignty of grace, the whole SIde of the truth from which we have come, and especially the doctrine of justification by faith alone but everything else both backwards and forwards from it, may easii y be ~orgo~ten and concealed ~nd subsequently denied. The theologia crucis, III whIch the true t~eologt~ gloriae ?as its roots, may easily be destroyed by a false theologza glonae. ThIS has happened time and again on the way which we are now entering, in the attempt to unfold the problem of the reconciled man. We have every reason to consider ourselves warned in this respect. Vestigia terrent. But even in face of all the dangers that threaten, there can be no question of withdrawal, of rejecting this "second problem of the doctr~ne of reconciliation," of not taking it up. All the danger of the questIOn of the reconciled man, all the anxieties to which the experiences of past and present give rise, cannot alter the fact that this is not ~ question which is arbitrarily and even malevolently invented and Imp~rted fro~ .with~ut, bu~ one which ~s inescapably posed by Holy Scnpture, ansmg WIth an mward necessIty from deliberation on the matter, and always putting itself in some form. Whatever the prese~t-day situation may be, it does not allow us to suppress the questIOn. We could not even draw our first line, that which runs from ~bove to below, without touching this question, and even being deeply Involved in it, in our final discussion of the Church and faith. No

10

§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man 1.

cautious expediency can be allowed to prevent us from taking it up again boldly and firmly. To be sure, the glory belongs t~ God alone at the heart of the Christian message of the atonement as I~ has tak~n place in Jesus Christ .. Yet this ~oes not alter the fact, but Includes. It, that the subject of thIS message IS both God and man, the glory :vhlch God manifests by making Himself the righteousness and salvatIon of an This is how the matter is stated in the Old and New Testament ~cri~tures. They do not put God. abstractly at that heart. of the message, but man with God. And It may well be a temptatIon and even dangerous to overlook this, to kno,",: better, to try to oppose to the continually threatening anthropomomsm a no less abst~ac.t theomonism. A committed mistake is not put right by commIttIng t~e opposite mistake. If, as history shows us, we are threa~ene~ at thIS point by the mistake of a theology of the man w~o IS pIOUS ~~d righteous and holy in himself, and therefore of a doctnn~ of. reco~cIlI~­ tion which is hollow and empty and unreal ~n its ?~J~ctIve SId~, It would only be the opposite error if in view of thIS pOSSIbIlIty we decIded for the theology of a man who is certainly envisaged and touched by the grace of God, but only touched o,:~w~rdly a~d ~ot changed, an? therefore for the doctrine of a reconCIlIatIOn whIch I~ unre~l on. thIS side. To close our eyes on one side because of pOSSIble dI:t~rtIons, but in this way to replace one distorted picture by.what IS m fa~t another, to move out of one cul-de-sac into the next, IS a poo~ and ~n the true sense" reactionary" procedure. Even (and especIally) In theology the fear of impending dangers i.s always ~ bad teacher. It is from this fear, in the flight from the dIstorted pIcture of an atonement which is unreal on the subjective side, that t?e fatal theology of the pious man has usually ari~en. To har~en Its exponents, to strengthen them in their bias, to remtroduce theIr error, we ha.ve only to close our eyes to this side, to oppose to the.m the other dIstorted picture. But to overcome them, to prev~nt theIr resurgence, we must determine not to bristle excitedly at theIr erro~ (only to fall oursel:res into error) but to look calmly at the problem mvolved, not dro~p~ng and leaving it, but taking it up again in a new and ~ettey; wa~, ~voldmg possible mistakes, but not avoiding the problem Itsel~ as It IS po.sed by Scripture and the facts o.f the ~ase. To be. sure, thIS means ~ nsk. But nothing venture, nothmg wm. There IS no theology wlt~OUt risk. In face of all the transgressions of the past, ?oth O? .the nght hand and on the left, we may indeed sigh: omma .vestlgla terrent. The enterprise is indeed a hazardous one on every SIde. F~r. there have always been fears on every side, leading to the oppOSItIon of one distorted picture to another, the exc~an~e of one cul-de-sac for a second. The necessary and incumbent nsk IS that we should break through this circulus vitiosus of reactions. This means concr~tely t~at hould not evade the problem of the man reconcIled WIth we s hut in defiance of all the hazards pose It . WI'th d ue care an d God

The Second Problem of the Doctrme Of Reconciliation

II

circumspection, adopting a genuinely active and not merely a passive attitude towards it. In relation to history this also means that we have good reason to give to the Christian tendencies and movements which in this connexion are usually thought of in a predominantly or even exclusively critical way the cool and collected discussion which is their right. Can it really be that they have missed altogether the Evangelical message attested in Scripture, and represented a doctrine which is completely alien to the Word of God, so that we can only repudiate them' Or may it not be that in their own way-involving perhaps very serious or even the most serious mistakes-they have been stirred up by a particular concern to give particular attention to a particular element in that message, that they too have been occupied legitimately (in intention at least) with the exposition of Scripture which is the duty of the Church? We cannot and will not be compelled to make common cause with them or espouse their errors. But we owe it to them-or rather to Scripture and the matter itself-at least to give them a hearing; at least to accept the question which they raise, whether we have sufficiently taken into account the particular element which they think they have represented, and (badly perhaps) have actually represented and still represent; to learn from them, it may be, that it is fitting and even high time that we should do so. I will try to make this clear with an example. vVe might take Christian mysticism, or the associated movement of Pietism in the sphere of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, or the remarkable theology and piety of the so-called Enlightenment, which became so effective over so wide a front. Or why not the classical conception in which-in the fulness of time-Schleiermacher gathered up the development of post-Reformation Evangelical Christianity? But because of its distinctively blatant character, I will choose a movement which is particularly significant and characteristic in this connexion. In a wealth and complexity of continually new forms, it has asserted itself almost from the very beginnings of the Christian Church, and not only is it still with us to-day, but we can say with tolerable certainty that either in its traditional forms or in new ones it will be so in the future. Yet 'it was one of the main strongholds attacked by the Reformation of the 16th century which is our own basis. I refer to the phenomenon which in Church history is known by what is in one respect, of conrse, the very misleading name of monasticism. The shadow which lies over this movement and the institutions to which it has given rise is thick and heavy. The Reformers knew what they were about when they refused to accept it and overthrew the institutions. This was inevitable as matters stood in the 16th century. And where attempts are now made within the Evangelical Church of the present to revive monasticism in various forms, good care must be taken that in the antithesis then disclosed, and not yet legitimately overcome, there is not an imperceptible movement oyer to t'le wrong side and therefore into the shadow. This does not mean, however, that it is incumbent and legitimate to ignore a limine and as a whole the idea and enterprise involved, discrediting it as " monkery" and evading the question of its problem and significance even for our Evangelical life and thinking. On the contrary, in the light of the history and present reality of monasticism we have to make certain distinctions. We have to distinguish, first, between the motives and intentions which demonstrably underlie this enterprise in its various

12

§ 64. The Exattatt'on of the Son of Man

manifestations, and the institutions and other forms to which it has given rise. And we have to distinguish, second, between its first and great exponents and their lesser and sometimes very small successors, who often enough (as is the way in separatist developments and groups on our own side) are only imitators even in the second generation, and from whom we can gather only m a confused or distorted way what was originally at issue. We may have many serious objections to the ancient and modern theory and practice (and sometimes the usus and abusus) of Eastern and Western monasticism, and we may be constrained to voice them, yet without invalidating in any way the underlying will and intention-even if there is reason to think that this, too, is not altogether free from error. The serious repudiation of a Macarius the Great or Basil the Great, a Benedict of Nursia, a Francis of Assisi or Dominic, a Thomas a. Kempis, even an Ignatius Loyola or Theresa of Avila, is not quite such a simple mattereither in their own time or to-day-as many good Protestants have supposed, not only because they seem to have been conscious of at least some of the things that we think we know better, but also because they have given us other things at least to think about. It is advisable to advance very cautiously at this point, not at all in a censorious spirit, but for all our firmness with a definite anxiety to learn. The word " monk" (monachus) derives from !LOVD>, alone. And so we read in A. Bertholet's analysis of the general religio-historical phenomenon of monasticism (R.G.G.· IV, p. 130) that it "developed out of the need felt by those religiously inclined to isolate themselves, to withdraw from their worldly surroundings, in order to live the more freely their own particular lives." Its ideal is " understandable only on a pessimistic judgment of the world, inspired by the thought either of its natural transitoriness, its ethical inadequacy or its religious emptiness" (op. cit., p. 131). It is, therefore, a flight from the world and man. And there can be no doubt that something of this is to be found in many of the attempts at Christian monasticism. In illustration of this motive reference has been made to the tragic political and social conditions in Egypt in the second half of the 3rd century. But the-lyrically or enthusiastically intendedsolution: 0 beata solitudo-sola beatitudo, does not need to be caused by any particular or particularly unsatisfactory contemporary conditions. How a man can be inspired to become a monk in this literal sense of the term-monachushas been classically described from his own experience by one who was very far from being a monk in the Catholic and technical sense, the English Baptist John Bunyan, at the beginning of his Pilgrim's Progress (1675), where Christian, in the status nascendi as such, rises up to flee from the City of Destruction to Mount Zion. He sees himself in a dream as he leaves his house and starts to run. And his wife and children come crying after him to return. But he sticks his fingers in his ears and runs on with the cry: Life, life, everlasting life, not looking behind him, but taking a straight course across the plain. And is it not exactly the same-at a more exalted level-in the life of Bunyan's older contemporary, Blaise Pascal? This then, or some similar way, is how we shall have to picture the apparently quite unfounded radical unrest and consequent attitude of hundreds and thousands who at that decisive point towards the end of the 3rd century fled into the Egyptian desert and became anchorites (those who withdrew, or drew back). This, or some similar way, is how it went with many others. The question that we have to put to this mode of conduct is the obvious one that one does not have to be a Christian to be sated with the world and man, to wish to have done with the turmoil of earth, to hurry away as fast as one's feet can carry one. And to become and be a Christian one does not need to be up and off into the desert. A flight. fro~ the world is not !n a?"y sense identical with the flight to God. And one thmg IS sure-that even m hiS hut or cave the hermit will never be free from the most dangerous representative of the world, i.e., himself. Nor can this flight claim to be an imitation of God. For neither in

1.

The Second Problem of the Doctrine of Reconciliation

13

Himself (as the Triune) nor outwards (as the Creator and Sustainer of the distinct being man and his cosmos) is God isolated or alone. It is also to be noted that this meaning of monachus is not characteristic of the phenomena of the second and even the first century, and incipiently perhaps the apostolic age itself, in which the origins of what were later called monasticism 3re to be found. From the very first there were Christians who did not marry (I Cor. 7 25 1.), or hold possessions (Mt. I0 9 f., Ac. 2s only but of the heart, which men can feel bound to render to other men institutionally? In a relationship between sinful men, will not this necessarily mean that the majesty of God is obscured, that a burden IS laId both upon those who have to command and those who have to obey whIch neIther can bear? WIll not the attempt to actualise institutionally a reprpsentatlOn of the communio sanctorum inevitably result in an illusion which ~toes injury to God and falsely exalts one man and falsely abases another? Ihese are serious questions which can and must be asked. The only thing is that we must not think that we can dispose of monasticism on this side either. If what is impossible with men is possible with God, and the Spirit bloweth where He listeth, it cannot finally be disputed that a genuine fellowship of the samts could and can take place in the form of genuine commanding and genuine obeymg even in the sphere of this kind of institution. The Benedictine rule wb,ch is our best guide in this whole matter, is a document which not only dis~ plays an extraordinary knowledge of life and the soul and men, but is also charactensed by a true fear of God, and it must not be overlooked-its first concrete regulation has to do, for example, with the responsibility and obligations of the abbot (c. 2)-that the danger which threatens in the sphere of authority and obedience was at least well known to its authors. A" good" monastery-and there were and are s11ch-was never the den of arrogance and tyranny that the maJonty of average Protestants imagine. Rule and obedience could and can actually be exercised and rendered with great wisdom, humility and sincerity. And If It IS lIlcontestable that the eommunio sane/arum can be achieved only in

IS

§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man

the distinctive triangle of God, a man and a fellow-man-the two latter being united in a definitely ordered relationship-we cannot reject out of hand the recognisable purpose of the vita monastiea, for all the questions and objections which we may have to level against its theoretical and practical execution. Were not the great leaders of monasticism right when they asked whether the task of this eommunio (not only in worldly society but also in the Church itself) has not been continually neglected within the limits of the attainable, and when they determined to apply themselves seriously to this task? And again we cannot escape the counter-question whether this concern and purpose, this question of brotherhood and its presuppositions, is not perhaps a little alien to us, and what better we can propose or do along these lines. To sum up, the desire and aim of monasticism was to achieve in its own distinctive way a form of that discipleship of the Lord which is not only commanded generally in the Gospels but partially at least, and by way of illustration, more specifically outlined. Its desire and aim was, therefore, a concrete individual and collective sanctification, a teleological concretion of the Christian status, a practical and regulated brotherhood, and all this in the service of concrete and total love. It is certainly good that we should definitely and inflexibly oppose to this desire and aim the truth that the sinner is justified only for Jesus Christ's sake, by faith and not by the works of any law, not even a law taken from the Gospels, not even the law of love. It is a pity that in the four books of the [mitatio Christi, and the rule of the Benedictine and other orders, although this truth is not denied, in practice it is almost completely obscured by the plenitude of directions and counsels given for the doing of these works in their outward and inward form. It is a pity that the final sentence in Benedict is as follows: Faeientibus haee regna patebunt superna. This cannot be admitted for a moment. The statement must be resolutely reformulated. It is not because and as they do this that the regna superna will open up to them. It is because and as the regna superna are opened up to them in the death of Jesus Christ that they will do this in the power of His resurrection. It has to be remembered, however, that this sequence and basis seem to have been predominant in the historical form which we have perhaps to regard as the closest non-Christian model for Christian monasticism-the discipline of the Essenes recently discovered near the Dead Sea, a sect which strangely enough seems obviously to have known a basic truth in the Pauline doctrine of justification (Gal. 1 17 I). This sequence and basis was certainly suppressed in the history of monasticism, and even denied and contested in many of its forms, but once it is established we have always to learn from monasticism that it derives from faith and that necessarily in faith it has to do with discipleship, sanctification, concretion, brotherhood and love. Those who recognise what has been revealed for the world and for them in the resurrection of Jesus Christ will do this in the power of His resurrection. The monastic formulation of what has to be done may be open to question. The context in which monasticism has done it may be perverted. But this is no reason why we should suppress or neglect this action. And if we see clearly that this action, put in the right context, must not on any account be suppressed or neglected, but given its proper place, in justice and respect we can concede to the purposes and even the enterprises of monasticism that for all our reservations the particular standpoints from which it has described and demanded and attempted this action deserve our serious consideration in detail. Monasticism has been introduced at this point only as one example of a movement which arose and still continues within Christianity and which compels our attention with its disputable but deliberate and energetic treatment of the problem of the reconciled man-our attention, that is, to this problem, and therefore a historical appraisal. A related example would be that of what the Roman and Eastern Churches claim to be the existence of special Christians distinguished from the rest by the fact that after their death they are officially

1.

The Second Problem of the Doctrine of Reconciliation

19

declared to be " saints" and on account of their exemplary life are commended to the congregation for imitation, honour and invocation, the Roman cleric having them daily before him in the Proprium de Sanetis of the Previary. Similar examples could also be mentlOned. But mutatis mutandis what we have considered in relation to monasticism would apply to all of them. The result would not always be identically the same, but it would always be the corresponding one that there IS m fact thiS second problem of the doctrine of reconciliation posed not only by Scripture but very seriously by the history of the Church. We have only to add that within Protestantism the problem was seen from the very first, and given both theoretical and practical recognition, in the theology of Calvm m particular, and of the Reformed Church which followed him. It is not for nothing that both earlier and more recently this has been suspected of legalism and a certam kmshlp to the essence of monasticism. It would be historically interesting to compare with the theology of monasticism the doctrine of sanetificatio and the vita hominis ehristiani which in Calvin embraced and included what was substantially a Lutheran doctrine of justification, testing them carefully for agreements as well as contradictions. A mere reference ought to be enough to show that we are not leaving the ground of the Reformation, but following a powerful Reformation impulse, when we give to this matter rather greater and more insistent attention than is customary in the present theologIcal sltuatlOn, or generally expected, perhaps, in our own dogmatics.

The decisive certainty which we need on this way will necessarily consist in the point of departure which we have to choose and to which we must assign an absolutely controlling position and function. It is the same as that from which the first problem of the doctrine had to be developed. The problem of reconciled man, like that of the reconciling God, has to be based in Christology, and can be legitimately posed and developed and answered only on this basis. It has its roots in the identity of the Son of God with the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth, in what this man was and did as such, in what happened to Him as such. In and with His humiliation (as the Son of God) there took place also His exaltation (as the Son of Man). This exaltation is the type and dynamic basis for what will take place and is to be known as the exaltation of man in his reconciliation with God. In His fellowship with God, and therefore in our fellowship with Him, this One, there is achieved our fellowship with God, the movement of man from be~ow to above, from himself to God. It is primarily and properly thIS human Subject, who, as the object of the free and liberating grace of God, cannot be only an object in the event of atonement, but also becomes an active Subject. In Him man is made the new man, reconciled with God. According to I Cor. 1 30 He is made unto us not only righteousness but also sanctification. First of all, then, in this chapter we must speak of Him specifically. But even later we must always speak of Him. It would be a strange Christology which did not give the same attention to the true humanity of Christ as to His true deity, or, according to the older view of His work, to His royal office as to His high-priestly office, to the exaltation of the Son of Man. It is from this point therefore, in the particular light of this, the human, side of the truth of the Mediator and Reconciler, that we

§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man

20

have now to consider and present the whole event of reconciliation. It is from this point that we have to consider and present the specific form of sin as the sloth of man as it emerges in the mirror of the exaltation which has come to him in the man Jesus. It is from this point, as it has taken place in Him, that we have to consider an.d present the whole sanctification of .m~n for the se~vice o! ~od and hIS fellows, the edification of the Chnstlan commumty as It IS gathered by and around this man, and finally Christian love as it knows and seeks God and this man, as it strains after this man-the work of the awakening power of the Holy Spirit. And we have to do all this in such a way that the line leads clearly and deeply into the sphere of human existence (both general and particular), and yet is never more than a repetition and confirmation of its christological starting-point. We have to do it, therefore, as an exposition, a series of variations on the words of Eph. 415 : that we "may grow up into him in all t?i.ngs, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly lomed together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, a~cording to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh mcrease of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." Reversing the title of the first chapter, we have called the whole of this second chapter " Jesus Christ, the Servant as Lord." If we are successful in doing what is indicated by this title, not only once but in every necessary turn and connexion the dangers which inevitably threaten in this sphere will be avoided, and above all we can hope to do some measure of justice to the problem as it is posed by Scripture, the exposition of Scripture in the ecumenical Church, and the matter itself.

2.

THE HOMECOMING OF THE SON OF MAN

There are two elements in the event of the incarnation as it is attested in J n. 1 14 • If we put the accent on " flesh," we make it a statement about God. We say-and in itself this constitutes the whole of what is said-that without ceasing to be true God, in the full possession and exercise of His true deity, God went int? the far country by becoming man in His second person or mode of bemg as the Sonthe far country not only of human creatureliness but also of human corruption and perdition. But if we put the accent on " Word," we make it a statement about man. We say-and again this constitutes the whole of what is said-that without ceasing to be man, but assumed and accepted in his creatureliness and corruption by the Son of God, man-this one Son of Man-returned home to where He belonged, to His place as true man, to fellowship with God, to relatiofolship with His fellows, to the ordering of His inward and outward eXIstence, to the fulness of His time for which He was made, to the presence and

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The Homecoming of the Son of Man

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enjoyment of the salvation for which He was destined. The atonement as it took place in Jesus Christ is the one inclusive event of this going out of the Son of God and coming in of the Son of Man. In its literal and original sense the word a.7ToKaTalJ..d.aanv (" to reconcile ") means" to exchange." The reconstitution and renewal of the covenant between God and man consists in this exchange-the exinanitio, the abasement, of God, and the exaltatio, the exaltation of man. It was God who went into the far country, and it is man who returns home. Both took place in the one Jesus Christ. It is not therefore a matter of two different and successive actions, but of a si~gle actio~ in which each of the two elements is related to the other and can be known and u~derstood only' in ~his relationship: the going out of God only as it alms at the c.ommg m of I?an; the coming in of man only as the reach and outworkmg of the gomg out of God; and the whole in its original and proper form only as the being and history of the one Jesus Christ. As we read in Eph. 49f . : "Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth. He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things." It is to this ascension, the coming in: the return home of the Son of Man, as it took place in Him, that we have now to address ourselves. This is the root of the second problem of the doctrine of reconciliation. When the whole of this subject is before us, we can hardly fail to think of the New T.estament passage which in every age-and with a rather dubious preference In our own day-has always been valued in the Church (with all kinds of different interpretations) as central to the whole New Testament and especially the Synoptic tradition. I refer to the so-called parable of the Prodigal Son, the son who was lost and was found again (Lk. 1511.32). It would be a strained interpretation to try to give to it a direct christological reference, as has .been attempted. In what it says directly, Le., with its parabolic reference accordIng to the context (in concretion of the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin) it speaks of the sin of man and the mortal threat which comes to him in consequence, of his repentance and return to God, and of the overwhelming grace with which this one who turned away and then turned back to God is received by Him. According to vv. 1-2 this is all with a view to the " ~ublicans and ~inners " who come to Jesus and hear Him, whom He receives (7TpoaSEX ETa ,) , and WIth whom He eats-in contrast to the scribes and Pharisees who seem to shun Hi~ for thi~ :eason. In the parable the latter correspond t~ the elder son, who WIll not rejOICe at the return of the younger, but (v. 28) is angry, and will not take part in the feast prepared by the father. But the elder son is only the-indispensable---contrast, just as the scribe or Pharisee, the nghteous who needs no repentance, has only the significance of contrast in relatIOn to the main statement of the passage. The real message is to be found m the story of the son who left his father but then returned and was received by hIm .''I'lth JOy and ho~our.. And .in t~is story it tells of the turning away and turnIng back of man III hIS r.elatronship to God, in which there is not only no dlmmutlOn but a suprem~ heIghtening and deepening of the fatherly mind and attI~ude of God towards hIm. We cannot say that more than this is said directly m tne passage, ~or can we extract more than this from it in direct exegesis. But If .the:e IS the danger of a st~ained interpretation, it is also possible not to do full Justrce to the passage, to mISS what is not expressly stated but implied

22

§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man

in what is stated, and therefore necessary to what is 52.ted, as that which is said indirectly. To this category there belongs that which was emphasised by Augustine (Quaest. ev., 2, 23), very cautiously by C. Starke (in his Syn. Ribl. exeg. in N.T., 1741) and on a more scientific basis by F. C. Baur and his school: the relationship between the lost and re-found younger son, the sinful hut pcnitr-nt 'am ha'aretz of publicans and sinners, and the election, calling and redemption of the Gentile world as it turns to the Gospel-in contrast to the Israel as revealed in the elder brother, which (v. 29) has served God for so many years, and thinks and claims that it has never transgressed His commandment, and in so doing excludes itself from the :\Iessianic feast. There is no explicit mention of this relationship to the Gentiles in the text. But is it not there, as everywhere where the New Testament deals with this 'am ha'aretz? Was it not definitely in the mind of the third Evangelist with his very pronounced universalistic interest? Is it really read into the text? Is it not the case that we cannot really expound the text without taking it into consideration-not in direct exegesis, because it is not there-but in and with and under what is said directly? Do we not fail to do full justice to the passage if we ignore this relationship? But the question also arises whether we have not to take from the text, in the same indirect way, a christological content, because it does actually contain this-although not explicitly. It has often been maintained, and in recent years triumphantly emphasised, that in the act of penitence to which this parable refers (as in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican in Lk. IS 91 ., or the discourse on the Last Judgment by the Son of Man in Mt. 25 311 .) there is no mention at all of the person and work of Jesus Christ. From this it is hastily concluded (as in Harnack's Essence of Christianity, Lect. 8) that not the Son and the atonement accomplished in Him but only the Father and His goodness belong to the Gospel preached by Jesus Himself, and that according to this Gospel of His nothing extraneous can interpose itself between God and the soul, the soul and its God. And, indeed, there is not a single word in the parable about Jesus Christ and the atonement accomplished in Him. But does this mean that a discussion of what is not said but definitely implied along these lines like that of Helmut Gollwitzer in his Die Freude Galles (194 1, II, p. 91 f.), is illegitimate, or even avoidable? As he sees it, the scribes and Pharisees did not understand that the Messianic work of salvation does not consist in the coronation of righteous Israel but the blessing of sinful Israel. Jesus' eating with the publicans and sinners is a fulfilment of this blessing, Not the theory of a Father-God who self-evidently and consistently pardons, but the miraculous actuality of this act of God, is the non-explicit but indispensable presupposition of the happening between God and man which is envisaged in the relations between father and son described in the parable. In the parable, then, Jesus is " the running out of the father to meet his son." Jesus is " hidden in the kiss which the father gives his son." Jesus is the power of the son's recollection of his father and home, and his father's fatherliness and readiness to forgive. This is the indirect exegesis. And it is not allegorical but legitimate if there is to be an exposition of the parable in the context of the whole of the Third Gospel, and the whole New Testament message. It does justice to what is there in the light of its background, i.e., it expounds it from its context. Yet although there can be no objection to it on grounds of method, it is not altogether satisfactory. For, throwing all the emphasis upon the action of the father, and deriving the reference to Jesus Christ from this, it destroys the essential balance of the parable, and cannot therefore offset more recent Protestant exegesiswhich is guilty of exactly the same error-as effectively as is required. For this reason, although not opposing it in content, I prefer to replace or rather to complete it by a different exposition. For after all the main figure in the story is the younger son who leaves his father and is lost, but returns and is found again. And what we have to

2.

The Homecoming of the Son of Man

23

demonstrate in face of more recent Protestant exegesis is the presence and action of the Son of God, and therefore of the atonement accomplished in Him, in what takes place between God and man as indicated in the parable. Directly, this cannot be demons.trated from .the text. That would be a strained interpretation. There can be no SImple equatIOn of Jesus Christ with the lost son of the parable ~and even less, of c;ourse, WIth the flesh of the fatted calf which was killed for h~S reception, as Ambrose once suggested. But again we do not do justice to tHe story If ~e do ~ot see a~d say that in the going out and coming in of the lost son m hIS relatIOnshIp WIth the father we have a most illuminatinO' parallel to the way trodden by Jesus Christ in the work of atonement, to His hu~iliation and exaltatIOn. Or better, the going out and coming in of the lost son. and therefore the fall and blessing of man, takes place on the horizon of the humlhatlOn and exaltation of Jesus Christ and therefore of the atonement made m HIm. I t has iJ?- this its higher law. It is illuminated by it. In this, and therefore m Itself, It IS clear and significant and important. . In the parable the son comes with his greedy and arbitrary demand, takes h:s mhentance from ~he hands of his father, makes his way into a far country, "astes hIS substance m notous hvu~g-with harlots, as we are later told (v. 30) -and then suffers want m t~e famme which comes on that land, being glad at last to feed on the husks whIch do not belong to him, but to the swine which he IS charged to keep. This is the way of man in his breaking of the covenant WIth God-the way of lost Israel, of the lost" publicans and sinners" of the lost Gentile world. It is certainly not in any direct sense the way of the Son of God who IS obedIent to the Father, the way of Jesus Christ. And yet it cannot be del1led that the way of the latter is in fact the way into the far country of a lost human eXIstence-the wa~ m ~hlch He accepts identity and solidarity with thIS lost son, unreservedly takmg h~s place, taking to Himself his sin and shame, hIS transgressIOn, as though He HImself had committed it, making his misery HI~ o~n as though He HImself had deserved it, and all this in such a way that the fnghtfulness of thIS far country, the evil of the human situation, is revealed m ItS full depth~ only as it beco~es His situation, that of the holy and righteous Son of God. \\ hat IS the fatal Journey of the lost son as seen from this standpomt? Surely it is only a sorry caricature of the going out of the one Son of God mto the world as it took place in Jesus Christ, of the humiliation in which, WIthout ceaslllg to be who He is, but in the supreme exercise and expression of HIS Sonship and deity, He became poorfor our sakes (2 Cor. 8 9 ). But it is obviously ItS cancatu:e. As away from the heights to the depths, from home to a far country, It IS an~logous to it. It is similar for all its dissimilarity, like the being of Adam III re~atlOn to that of Jesus Christ: 'TV"'OS 'ToO I'-EAAOV'TOS (Rom. 5 14 ). But ~hen III the parable the lost son comes to himself among the unclean beasts WIth whom he assocIates, remembenng the well-being in his father's house whIch he has exchanged for this imminent death by hunger. He resolves, therefore~ to return to hIS f
48

§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man

man Jesus of Nazareth. B~t it~ object, that which G~d assumed into unitv with Himself and HIS belllg and essence and kllld and natu!e, is not" a man," i.e., one of many who existed and was actual wIth all his fellow-men in a human being and essence and nature and kind as opposed to other creatures, but w~o was and is als? this one .man as opposed to all other men. For thIS would necessanly mean eIther that the Son of God, surrendering His own existence as such, ~ad changed Himself into this man, and was therefore no longer th.e S~n of God and by nature God in the human nat~1fe assurr;ted by HIm, III Jesus Christ, existing as man; or t~at !I~ dId ?ot eXIst ~s One, bui in a duality as the Son of God mamtamIllg HIS own eXIstence, and somewhere ~nd somehow alongside as this individual man. And if, as is not possible, we could and should accept one. of thes~ abs~rd alternatives, what would happen to all other men sIde by sIde ~Ith the one man who is the Son of God in one or other of these cunous senses? What significance could His existence, with its special determination, have for theirs? How far could God, in and with the adoption of this one man to unity with Himself, adopt them all? How far could the one Son of God be not merely a son of man but the Son of Man the man who could represent them all, who could plead with God fo~ them all and with them aU for God? The more cautious statement: "The Word became flesh," i.e., adopted our human nature and kind, our human being and essence, does not, of course, oblige us to abandon the idea and concept of " a man "-we shall have to d.o justice to it at the right place and time-~ut rather to postpone It for the moment. This does not mean that It allows us- to evade the attack of those questions which otherwise ~re ob:riously unans.wer~~le. What God the Son assumed into unity wIth HImself and HIS d1Vllle being was and is-in a specific individual form elected and prepa~ed for this purpose-not merely " a man" but the humanum, the be~ng and essence, the nature and kind, which is that of all men, whIch characterises them all as men, and distinguishes them from other creatures. It is not the idea of the humanum, in which per definitionem this could exist in real men either never and nowhere or only always and everywhere. It is the concrete possibility of the exist~nce of one man in a specific form-a man elected and prepared fa: thIS purp~se, not by himself, but by God (this is the point of the electIon and C~UIllg of Israel and Mary). But in this form it is that which is human III .all men. It is the concrete possibility of the existence of a man whI~h will be like the concrete possibility of the existence of all men and III the realisation of which this man will be our Brother like ou:-selves. Because it is our being and essence, our nature and kind, which the Son of God willed to realise and has in fact realised in this one concrete possibility of human existence determ~ned and eIec.ted and prepared by Him, His existence as a human eXl~tence, as thI.S one m~n, ha~ a direct relevance for all other men, and III all the umqueness III whICh

2.

The Homecoming oj the Son oj Man

49

it is an. event in .Jesus Christ His incarnation signifies the promise of the basIc alteratIOn and determination of what we all are as men. In Jesus Christ it is not merely one man, but the humanum of all men which is posited and exalted as such to unity with God. And this i~ the case just because there has been no changing of God into a man' Just because there was and is no creation of a dual existence of God and a lTJan; jUs~, becaus~ there ~s only One here, "the Father's Son, by nature God, but thIS One III our human likeness, in the form of a servant (Phil. 2 7), in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 83). At this point ,we have reached what the older dogmatics-using the language uf later Greek phIlosophy-descnbed by the term anhypostasis, the impersonalitas of the human nature of Christ. Hollaz defines the term as follows (Ex. theol. acroam.,17°7, III, I, 3, qu. 12): carentia propriae subsistentiae, divina Filii Dei hypostas]. tanquam longe eminentiori compensata. By ')?TOUTaU'S, persona, was TlH:a,nt, the Independent existence (the propria subsistentia) of His humanity. Its vrrOUTams IS, longe emmentwr, that of the Logos, no other. J eSl1S Christ exists as a man because and as this One exists, because and as He makes human essence His own, adopting and. exalting it into unity with Himself. As a man, therefore, He eXists dIrectly III and with the one God in the mode of existence of His eternal Son, and Log?s;-;not oth;r~is,e or apart from this mode. He certainly do~_ ,not eXIst only€v 'O€~, but €v a:0J1.'I', m uno certo mdzviduo (Polanus, Synt. Iheo,- chr., 1609, VI, IS, col. 2406), III the one form of human nature and being elected and prepared and actualised by God, yet not autonomously, as would b~, the case If that wIth WhICh God unites Himself were a homo and not humanitas. :Vlth a more e~phatic regard for this anltypostasis of the human nature of Jesus Chnst" H. HeIdegger (Corp. Theol. cM., 1700, XVII, 36 , quoted from Heppe, 2nd edIt., p. 3 2 5) defined the Illcarnation as the assumptio ltumanae naturae in personam Filii Dei, qua Aoyos, Filius Dei . . , naturam humanam propriae ,)?TOUTaU€WS expertem tn unztatem personae suae assumpsit, ut Aoyou assumentis et naturae humanae assumptae una eademque sit ')?TOUTaU'S, extra quam ipsa nec subsistit unquam nec subszstere potest. The objection has often been raised against this theologoumenon that it seems perhaps, by what it questions, and with the enhypostasis indirectly maintained by It (the IdentIty of the eXistence of the man Jesus with that of the Son of God), to Illvolve at an impor~ant point a denial of His true humanity, a concealed or even blatant DocetIsm, SInce It must obviously belong to the true humamty of Jesus Chnst that He should have an independent existence as a man hke us, But to this objection we may reply with Hollaz (loc. cit.): Perfectw ret ex essenha, non ex subszstentia aestimanda est, It is true enough that the humanum exists always in the form of actual men. This existence is ~lOt demed to the man Jesus, but ascribed to Him with the positive concept of nhypostaszs. , But It IS hard to see how the full truth of the humanity of Jesus C.hrrst IS qualified or even destroyed by the fact that as distinct from us He is alSO a real man only as the Son of God, so that there can be no question of a pecuhar and autonomous eXIstence of HIS humanity. \. It may also be objected, however, that the theologoumenon is superfluous. \ e have seen what depends on it: no less than the fact that in Jesus Christ we ~o not have to do with a man into whom God has changed Himself, but unll1~nged ,and directly With God Himself; no less than the unity in which as n He IS the Son of God, and as the Son of God man; and finally no less than ~he unIversal relevance and significance of His existence for all other men And OOkmg back to the beginning of our analysis of the event of incarnation w~ ~~~ add that the real divine sonship of the man Jesus would obviously be true erwlse than In VIrtue of the ImtIatIve and act of divine humility (which is

50

§ 64. The Exaltation oj the Son oj Man

intrinsically impossible) if its object were actual otherwise than in its fulfilment and not exclusively in that fulfilment-m the fact that God the Son took to Himself a concrete possibility of human being and essence elected and prepared by Him for this purpose and clothed it with actuality by makmg Himself Its actuality. Against the fact that God h~s don; th~s in J ;sus Chns\. and that this can be so only in Him, as this One Eq,avEpwfiT/ EV. uapKL (I Tim. 3 ), protest and contradiction will always be made, and, because It IS agamst the co:~1fessedly (O/-,OAOYOV/,,Evws) great mystery, the Christian s~cramentum, it may ?lalm to be relevant and even necessary from the standpomt of the unbelief which mdwells us all. But the protest against the concept of anhypostasts or enhypostasts. as such is without substance, since this concept is quite unavoidable at this pomt if we are properly to describe the mystery.

We resume the discussion with the second statement in our description of the incarnation: (2) that the existence of the So.n .of G:0d became and is the existence of a man. There are not two eX1stmg s1de by side or even within one another. Ther~ is only the. one. God the Son, and no one and nothing either alongs1de or even m HlI~. But this One exists, not only in His divine, but also in human bemg and essence in our nature and kind. He exists, not only like the Father and th~ Holy Ghost as God, but in fulfilment of that act of humpity also as man, one man, this man. The Son of God becomes and 1S as men become and are. He exists, not only inconceivably as God, but also conceivably as a man; not only above the world, but also in t~e world, and of the world; not only in a heavenly and invisible, but m an earthly and visible form. He becomes and is, He ~xists-we c~n­ not avoid this statement; to do so would be the worst kmd of Docetlsm -with objective actuality. Does this mean, then, that He exist.s as one thing amongst others, and that as such He can be perce1ved and may be known like other thing~? Well, we cannot den~ that He is a thing like this, and can be perce1ved and known as such, 1f He was and is a man in the world, with an earthly and visible form. But, of course a man is not merely a thing or object. As a man among men he is ~ human Thou, and as such distinct from all mere things. Now as a Thou man is not merely an existential determination of the I, but the sum of all the objective reality of the world. And in Jesus Christ God becomes and is man, the fellow-man of all men. As God He is not merely one of many such fellow-men, nor is He merely the idea of fellow-humanity. We are speaking of " the Father's Son, by nature God." He became and is man, the fellow-man of all men; and therefore Thou, not merely in a simple, but in a supremely objective reality, the human Thou, which as such is also directly the Thou of the one eternal God. It is not that a man has rightly or wrongly taken it upon himself to be the objective reality of this human Thou, and has been grasped and understood and interpreted by others as the objective reality of this Thou. The fact is rathe~ that God .Himself, in His deep mercy and its great power, has taken It upon HImself to exist also in human being and essence in His Son, and therefore to

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The Homecoming oj the Son oj Man

51

become and be a man, and therefore this incomparable Thou. God Himself is in the world, earthly, conceivable and visible, as He is this man. We have to do with God Himself as we have to do with this man. God Himself speaks when thi" man speaks in human speech. God Himself acts and suffers when tnis man acts and suffers as a man. God Himself triumphs when this One triumphs as a man. The human speaking and acting and suffering and triumphing of this one man directly concerns us all, and His history is our history of salvation which changes th," whole human situation, just because God Himself is its human subject in His Son, just because God Himself has assumed and made His own our human nature and kind in His Son, just because God Himself came into this world in His Son, and as one of us " a guest this world of ours He trod." \Ve have again reached a point where we can see and understand a term in the older dogmatics-the particularly solemn and weighty one of the unio hypostatica, also called the unio personalis or immediata. This term has occupied a kind of key-position in the classical doctrine of the incarnation in all the great confessions. vVe shall later meet a communio naturarum, the communion of the divine and human essence in the one Jesus Christ without change and admixture, but also without cleavage and separation. And in this connexion we shall also come across the communicatio idiomatum, the doctrine which became a wellknown casus belli, and in which an attempt was made to develop rather more precisely this communion of the two natures. But however we may understand and expound these points in detail, they all rest on the " hypostatic" union, i.e., the union made by God. in the hypostasis (the mode of existence) of the Son. They all rest on the direct unity of existence of the Son of God with the man Jesus of Nazareth. And this is produced by the fact that in Himself this One raises up to actuality, and maintains in actuality, the possibility of a form of human being and existence present in the existence of the one elect Israel . nd the one elect Mary. He does this by causing His own divine existence to be the existence of the man Jesus. This hypostatic union is the basis and power of the nativitas ] esu Christi, of the secret of Christmas, which as such is accompanied by the sign of the miraculous conception and birth of Jesus Christ (C.D., I, 2, § IS, 3), yet which is not grounded in this miracle, but in the fact that it is (OI~OAOYOV/-,:en the priority and precedence. And the e:cecutlOn of the whole operatIOn IS not In any sense artificial once this presuPP.osltlOn. IS accepted. But can we really accept this presupposition? What kIns~lp IS there between thiS absolute religious self-consciousness and what IS called dIVIne sonshlp and sanctification ill the New Testament, emerging as the faith and love and hope of Christians? . Do we not have here an exchanging of ultlma~e thIngs for the penultimate to which even our little portion of Christian self-conSCIOusness also belongs, of the act of God for its reflexion in the existence of man as determmed by It? It IS remarkable that a cautious mind like Biedermann'~ does not seem to have noticed that what he allots and ascribes to the Chns;lan m th~se sections-giving away as plainly as he could the whole secret of Neo-I rotestantlsm nght up to ItS modern culmination in Bultmann-is the one great IllUSIOn of rehgious arrogance and the most venturesome of all mythsa prod~ct that we can onlyreally describe as the work of a rationalistic enthusiasm bordenng on lunacy. It IS only at thiS cost and in this enthusiasm that the actuahty of J es.us Christ can be equated with what the better Christian can know and expenence ?-s hiS umo mysl1ca with God. Even Donald Baillie ought to have ?onsldered thiS before he too--quite innocently, of course, and without bemg gU1l~y of the flag.ran.t extra:,agances of Biedermann-made it his business to try ~o mteq~ret Chnst m ~he hght of the Christian rather than the Christian III the ~ght of Chnst. Paul himself did not say that God lives in me, but Christ. And thiS Will always be the language of a mysticism-if we must use the term at ali-which has a proper sense of proportion. The Christian does not claim the fulness of the union of God with man for his own experience and self-conSCIOusness, but professes that other: the Mediator, in whom it has taken place for him. . ~e can therefo~e differentiate .the Giver and gift of grace from himself as the recipient and from ItS outworkmg m hiS own life. But if this differentiation stands, It means the end of that equation or identification. And, as at the former pomt, we. may even reverse the statement and say that the unio personalis of Jesus Chnst IS Itself alone the true umo mystiea-which means again of co that any companson . b e t ween t h em is left hanging in the air. ' urse, If appearances do not deceive, this excursus has had the result and conclusion of dlreetmg us to a material insight of decisive importance. The fact that the ~xlstence of God became and is also in His Son the existence of a man-the f nto hypostattea as the basIC form of the Christ-event-seems to dispense with tormal analogies altogether, accordmg to the general drift of our discussion. Is only an appearance? Is It that we have not yet found the true analogy? d~O'IS It necessanly the case that there is no such analogy? When the older "mat!CIans had all these deliberations behind them, and their readers waited

cidS

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§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man

perhaps, as some of ours may do, for a final and ~ositive thesis, they made a very surprising move by simply giving a fresh defimbon of the unto. hypostattea itself, the assuming and assumptIOn of human nature mto umty ":Ith the Son of God, its existence in and with His existence. \Vhat was the pom~ of th.ls ? It was obviouslv that in Jesus Christ we have to clo With an event and bemg which, as the direct re'velation of God, not only speaks for itself, but speaks also for Its own uniqueness, i.e., for the fact that it is analogous only to itself and can be understood only in terms of itself. "'e may, of course, h~e BlCdermann and manv others before and after him, misunderstand Jesus Chnst as t~e ~epresen­ tatiO'n and vehicle of a general divine-human (or divine-worldly). pnnClple, and therefore as an exemplary" religious personality." Where thiS IS the case, the search for analogies to what took place and is actual in Him will, of course, meet with success. Principles and the personalibes which represent them do have analogies, and can therefore be understood in other terms than their own. But we cannot really know Jesus Christ without realising from the very outset t~e futility of this search for analogies, and the inadequacy of all analoglCs to HIs own becoming and being. . . To be sure, certain analogies to the relatIOnshIp between G:0d and man, God and the world, are established and made possible in His becon:mg and ~emg. One such is the relationship between heaven and earth descnbe~ m Gen. I and often mentioned later in both Old and New Testaments. Agam, the bemg of man as husband and wife (Gen. 1 27 ) is expressly described as a picture of the living God of Israel in His action and c?-existence with man and the world. The relationships of father and Child, kmg and people, master a~d servant, frequently emerge in the Bible as corresponde~t.to thiS relatIOnshIp.. Eve:ywhere analogies have their proper pla~e where It Is.a mat~er of a consideratIOn and understanding of the covenant as It was Willed m ~od s eternal cou~sel and fulfilled in time in the incarnation of His Word. Agam, m the connexlOn WIth their earthly surroundings the fulfilment of the covenant, Jesus Chnst and the kingdom of heaven are all open to comparison. In this connexion ~hey are obviously made a subject of comparison in the New Testament. But m Jesus Christ Himself-and it is of Him that we now speak-we have to do w~th the eternal basis and temporal fulfilment of the co:venant and t~eref.ore w~th the ground and basis of all the natural and histoncal relatIOnshIps m whIch the covenant is reflected as the baSIC relationship between God and man, God and the world, and in which it has therefore its analogies. \Ve have to do With the presuppositi0n of the connexion in whi~h it can also be a subject of compansons. In Him we have the basic reality which underlies the POSSibIlity of the baSIC relationship of the covenant, and therefore all the natural and historical relabo~­ ships, and in them the analogies, and therefore J.:IIS own connexlOn With HIS earthly surroundings and the compansons which It mVltes. In HIm we have their beginning, their meaning and their goal, the centre which umt~s and carnes the whole, both creation and the covenant. ThiS centre IS. the dlvmely ~stab­ lished unity of existence between Himself and man, the UntO hypostattea m the one Jesus Christ. But as a wheel with its different spokes can have no spokes in the centre, so in this centre of creatIOn and the covenant, the ongm even of its own connexion with its earthly environment, there cannot be a relatIOnship between God and man, God and the world, which is comparable to natural and historical relationships, having an analogy or likeness in relationships of thiS kmd. That the Creator became a creature, the Lord a servant (and as a servant, and the Brother of all other servants, genuinely the Lord), the divine I a human Thou, God's existence the existence of an essentially different man-in other words, the becoming and being of Jesus Christ--cannot be understood and apprehended, either in advance or afterwards, by means of any reflexlOn WhICh looks beyond Him or from any neutral place apart from Him. \Vith a strange, one-SIded, selfglorious spontan~ity,we have to do here with the work and action of the faithfulness

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and omnipotence and mercy of God Himself, which has no ground of reality except m H,mself, or ground of kn.owledge except in His self-revelation. We have seen that m HIS work and actiOn God is primarily true to Himself; that He can do thiS work as the eternal Son of the eternal Father. But not even 'n the being of the triune God is there any analogy for th.e fact that He does actual:y cl.o It. We cannot deduce and understand It even tram that point, as though God were under a necessity to do it. In relation to God as to man it can be acknowledged and recogmsed and confessed only in the light of the fact that thIS event has actually taken place between God and man, that it is a real fact grounded m the free and eternal counsel of the divine will and accomplished in the d,vme ommpotence. The mcarnation of the 'Vord is this fact with t precedence, parallel or rep~tition either in the divine sphere or (much lesst~n the human, natural and hIstOrIcal creaturely sphere. The incarnation of the Word lS the great" Thus saith the Lord" to which theology can give only the assent that it has heard it and understood it as such, from which all rerl.exion which seeks and discovers analogies can only derive, but to try to subject which to analogies eIther m earth or heaven IS qUite nonsensical. Humana ratione doeert aut aeelpl non potest: quod nullum eius in tota natura perfeetum et omnino respondens e;nstet exemplum, quamvis recta ratione non pugnet: verum divinitus 4, e sertptura doeeri et probari, oeulisque fidei accipi debet (Leiden. Synopsis, 162 25, 3). . Yet-without relapsing into th~ way of thought which we have critically rejected, but In elUCidation of the mam statement thus characterised in its uniqueness-we can and must conel.ude on a posit!ve note. \¥hen we say Jesus Christ, and therefore speak of the eXistence of the Son of God in human nature as it was a.ctualised in Him, we certainly speak of the One who exists as this man and in tlUs way, but we do not speak of One who is alone as such, who became this man and existed in this way for Himself. 'Vhen we say Jesus Christ we say Jesus Chnst and HIS own-those who are co-elected by Him as the Son of God and in Hnn as the Son of Man. We say Jesus Christ and His community, Jesus Christ as the Head of HIS body, Jesus Chnst m both His heavenly and also His earthlyh,stoncal form of existence. His existence takes both the one form and the other. He has the one as the One, the Head, for Himself. And He has the other ~,gaIn as the One, the Head, but in and with His body,. His people, His community: I he relatIOnship between these two forms of HIS eXIstence is not so much com~arable as indirectly identical to the relationship between Himself as the eternal Son of God and His being as man. As we have seen already, the human nature elected by Him and assumed mto unity with His existence is implicitly that of all men. In H~s bemg as man God has implicitly assumed the human being of all men. In HIm not only we all as hommes, but our humanitas as such-for it IS both His and ours-exist in and with God Himself. And where this is known In faith by the awakening power of the Holy Spirit, there arises and is, not a second Jesus Christ, a second Head, but the second form of His one existence, HIS people as the second form of His body, the community of those who, as they look to I-hm. are umted WIth Him by the Holy Spirit in faith and love and hope,. finding their own humanity caught up in His, and therefore exalted as Such Into existence in and with God. This people, this community, is the form of HIS body m whlCh Jesus Christ, its one heavenly Head, also exists and has therefore HIS earthly-historical form of existence. It is of human essence-for the Church is not of divine essence like its Head. But it does not exist in independence of Him. It is not itself the Head, nor does it become such. But It eXIsts (avV7TC)GTaTOS and EvvrroO'TUTOS) in and in virtue of His existence. It lives b:cause and. as He lives, elected and awakened and called and gathered as a people by HIm. It IS HIS work, and It exists as His work takes place. Not for a smgle moment or m any respect can It be H,S body without Him, its Head. Indeed, It cannot be at all without Him. It does not exist apart from Him. It

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§ 64. The Exaltation of the Son of Man 2.

exists only a$ the body which serves Him the Head. For this reason-for otherwise it would have a separate and autonomous eXistence---:-It cannot even be HIs likeness or analogy. \Ve cannot speak, then, of a repetltlO~ or extensIOn of the incarnation taking place in it. But He, the one Jesus Chnst Hlll:,self,. eXists as man. He exists not only in heavenly form, but also m earthly-hlstoncal form. To His heavenly form of existence as Son of God and Son of Ma~ He has assumed this earthly-historical--the co,?munity as. His. one body which also has thiS form. He carries and maintams It m thiS umty with Himself as t?e people which not merely belongs to Him but is part of Himself. In God s eternal counsel, in His epiphany, and finally in His revelatIOn at t~e. end of the age, He was and is and will be this totus Chrzstus-Chnst and Chnstlans. And these two elements of His one being are not merely related to one another as He HImself as Son of God is related to His human nature. B:-,t, mthls second form, HIs relationship to His body, the community, is the relatIOnshIp of God and man as it takes place in this one being as Head and body. Thus the commumty of Jesus Christ can be that which the human nature of ItS Lord and Head IS. It cannot and must not be more than this. There can, therefore, be no questIOn of a reversal in which either the community or the individual Christian equates himself with Jesus Christ, becoming the subject where He !s ~mJy the pred~cate. There can be no question of a divinisation of the Church or tne mdlvldual Chnstlan which Jesus Christ has only to serve as a vehicle or redemptive agency. All thiS is cut away at the root and made quite impossible by the fact that He ::Imself is the Subject present and active an~ operative mIlls commumty. . Chnst liveth in me." He Himself lives m thiS I-lis earthly-hlstoncal form of eXistence, in the community as this form of His body. We shall return to ~hls comprehensive character of the humanity of Jesus Christ as the totus C~rtstus when we have again to speak of the Church. For the mo~ent thiS .remm~er of the totus Christus has the significance only of bnngl~g ou, the posItive Side ~f the frontier at which the incarnation as a hypostatic umon I.S to be known In ItS uniqueness as compared with all other unions. The remmder of the umty of Jesus Christ as the Head with the com.mumty as HIS body does not VIOlate thiS frontier, but confirms and strengthens It.

From the second statement, that the existence of the Son of God became and is also that of a man, the man Jesus of Nazareth, there follows the third, (3) that in the one Jesus Chr~st divine and hUI11:an essen:e were and are united. This statement bnngs ~s to t~e doctrme of the two natures in the strict sense. It says somethmg whIch cannot be relinquished and therefore cannot be evad~d. It .is not the mere shibboleth of a correct knowledge of Jesus Chnst. Ihs a consequence of the two preceding statements about the actio~ of God the Son, His existence in human essence, the real exaltatlOn of our. human essence as it has taken place in Jesus Christ. It c~)U~d be a ~hlbboleth only in opposition to an obsuring or .denial of the 1I1:S1ght whIch underlies it and from which it derives. In Itself, howe~er,lt h~s ~he char~ct~r only of an unavoidable transition.. The particular dlshke for It m modern Protestantism-as for a shIbboleth of so-called orthodoxyspeaks less against it than against those who. have br~ught. the charge. Obviously ~t cannot b~ un~erst0.o~ If ~here IS neIther the ability nor the deSIre to know eIther I~S ongm or ~ts. goal. By divine and human essence (the eqmvalent.of dlvme and human "nature," or quite simply divinity and humamty) we mean on the

The Homecoming of the Son of Man

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one hand that which Jesus Christ has in common with the Father and the I.Ioly Spirit as the Son o.f God, that which distinguishes His being and Its nature from the bemg and nature of man, and of all other reality ~istinct from God, with an absolute (and infinitely qualitative) drst1I1ctr.on; and on t~e other hand that which (even in His exaltation) He has m common WIth all other human creatures as the Son of Man that which marks off His being and its nature from the being and nature of God in His eternal modes of existence as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in His position and function as Creator and Lord of all things, with what is again an absolute (and infinitely qualitative) distinction. It is apparent at once that divine and human essence cannot be united as the essence of one and the same subject. Offence at the statement that Jesus Christ is the One who is of divine and human essence, in whom the two are united, is quite unavoidable. However we may define divine and human essence, unless we do violence either to the one or the other we can only define them (with all the regard we may have for the original divine reference of human essence) in a sharp distinction and even antithesis. The statement that Jesus Christ is the One who is of divine and human essence dares to unite that which by definition cannot be united. But if it is true that in Jesus Christ the existence of the Son of God became and is also that of a man, the statement must be ventured --although not, of course, in abstracto, not in a vacuum, not as the assertion of a general truth that that which by nature cannot be united, divine and human essence, may perhaps be united in a particular subject, but in concreto, in the encounter with this one Subject, in the acknowledgment and recognition and confession of its particular truth. This Subject, the one Jesus Christ, demands this statement, not as a statement about the possibility of uniting that which cannot be united, but as a statement about the uniting of that which is otherwise quite distinct and antithetical as it has actually taken place and been achieved in Him. How could there be a Jesus Christ, the One who as the Son of God exists also as man, if this uniting had not taken place, and did not still take place, in Him? In the encounter with Him, are we not forced to acknowledge and recognise and confess that this uniting has actually happened in Him, and that (cost what it may) this statement must therefore be ventured? It would, of course, be a rash and illegitimate venture if it were made only as a general statement, a general truth, about the metaphysical union (and its possibility) of the divine and the human. As such, it could only be described as a product of that rationalistic enthusiasm bordering on lunacy. But it is not the classical doctrine of the Church, only its later speculative interpretation, which understands it in this way, generalising it, relating it to the inward experience of the individual Christian. The classical doctrine of the two natures speaks of the one

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Jesus Christ, and only of Him. And it does this a posteriori, with a reference to Him, to the Son of God actually existing in the flesh. It does not derive from a known a priori, a superior possibility, but only from the given actuality, from Him Himself. In this genuine sense and understanding the statement about the two natures is only the childlike venture of faith. Indeed, it is better not understood as a " venture," but much less pretentiously as obedience. It is the expression of a realism determined by this object. And in face of this object this realism will not allow itself to be disturbed by any general considerations and their results, which are obviously impossible in this connexion. Instead of subjecting this object to an alien law, it will allow its law to be dictated by this object. In our last quotation from the Leidener Synopsis about the nature of the incarnation as an event which has no analogies and can therefore be known only in its self-revelation, there occurred the quite incidental observation: quamvis recta ratione non pugnet. The recta ratio which is not denied here, and therefore does not need to pick a quarrel, is not the ratio which is bound by the authority of Church dogma and therefore unfree, but the ratio which is directed to this object, which is determined by it, and therefore free in relation to it, and not burdened by any general considerations and their results. Offence at the statement about the union of the two natures in Jesus Christ is unavoidable only for a thinking which is un'conditionally bound by certain general presuppositions. This unconditional binding, whether by Church dogma or general logic and metaphysics, is not proper to recta ratio, to a thinking which is basically free. Recta ratio is reason as it is ready for the realism demanded of it in face of this object, and therefore free reason-free in relation to this object. The so-called" free" scholarship of the 19th century, which was the supreme and final norm, e.g., for Biedermann, was in fact a scholarship betrayed from one bondage to another, and therefore not free, and not the typical exercise of recta ratio which it was for so many years considered to be, both by itself and generally.

From the unity with His own existence into which the Son of God assumes human essence while ma.intaining His own divine essence, there follows, as we have said, the union of divine and human essence as it has taken place and been actualised in Him. Jesus Christ, then, does not exist as the Son of God without also participating as such in human essence. And He does not exist as the Son of Man without participating as such in the essence of the Son of God and therefore in divine essence. On both sides there is a true and genuine participation. It is true and genuine in virtue of the act of God the Son, which has its basis and power in His being, in His eternal unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He in His divine essence takes part in human essence-so radical and total a part that He causes His existence to become and be also the existence of the man Jesus of Nazareth. Again, He gives to the human essence of Jesus of Nazareth a part in His own divine essence as the eternal Son who is co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This two-sided participation, and therefore the union of the two natures in Him, arises and consists, therefore, from Him. Hence it is "from above to below," and only then (and

2. The Homecomz"ttg of the Son of Matt 6 as we have seen in h' h . . . 3 below to above.''' ~ ~:~~_~~delds cbhatra.ctetrll~bcallY different) " from 'ff . , u m lIS sequenc d' h d1 erent~ated two-sidedness which this and th d' e, an III t e natures Illvolves The Son of God d H' d~' Ifference of the two need to have a 'part also in huma' an IS IBvme essence, does not . . n essence ut He' H' 111 thIS man to human essence and k s .' " gives Imself essence. And the man J' e"u~ 0' f N'a rna teh dlt parbclpant in His divine . ~" • zare oes not tak't H' self, as III an act of robbery to be th S f G d e l upon Impant in divine essence. B~th are g~ve~nt~ H? an.d there~o:e particiso that His being in this exaltation l.m by free dlvme grace, the most profound human thankful can co~s~st on!y in. an action of and human essence in Him the 0 ness · th e umficatlOn of divine d ' ne, an d erefore Hi b . ~oGoadn~~~; aU;:~f ~~~. absolutely on the unity aChie~ede~it~Sev;~~

But a~ it rests on this unity, and is't d' . . . I? Irect con~equence, It IS clear that It is not itself a unity b t . , u a umon III that two s d d t ' . bon, the communio naturarum In th S b' -.1 e par lclpaand human essence is united' b t 't ~_one u Ject Jesus Christ divine , u 1 1:0 not one and th T . e same. hIS would presuppose one of three thin S' th G God and changed Himself into a m~n·' th~~ od had ceased to be man and become God (if an th' , a man had ceased to be or (worst of all) that there \a~gbe:~ ~~:; ~ore d:e~dful thought) ; essence a third and middle thing, neither Go~ of dlvme and human these corresponds to His pict'-re a ' t nor man. But none of Testament witness. In ackno;'led ~ I emerges. c!early in the New of the actuality of Jesus Christ ne ~h ent re~ogmtlOn and confession th ~hird could or can be thought or S~de~f~' rst, th~ second nor the In a true and genuine . b' 1m. J:Ie IS both together, or the other, the Reco~~:fe~'a:J ;~t~~~~rd~~tructlOneither of the one One who restores and fulfils the divinely insti;~e~ God and man, the God and man. He is of both d' . d u e covenant between God, born of the Father in eterni~vIne an human essence: "Very Virgin Mary" (Luther) The unit:~ anf .a~s~ve.ry man, born of the " and also," and therefore the idea I~ w H.C e.ls ~oth demands this of the genu.ine distinctiveness of divi~e ::::~o~' WIth ItS presupposition 'd UI~an e.ssence, and therefore the rejection of the thought f the two. In this context unity w 0 l~ny ~ enbficatlOn or identity of Not only would it sa much les ou ~o say any more than union. t actuality of Jesus Chri~t and spea~' br 1t wfioUld completely miss the on yo f a gment of the imagination . The first part of the Chalcedonian definit". . .. . lOn I~ relevant III thJS connexion WIth Its safeguarding against the excesses of Al ~anJe ~hrist, the only-begotten Son and Lord ~xan nan theology: One and the ';;UYXtJTWS (lnconjuse) and o.TP fJELw»; and the one Jesus Christ, who unites both natures in Himself, has divine as well as human qualities. Where the Reformed were not willing to follow emerges supremely in the fact that they refrained from certain statements which were quite possible within this common framework but seemed to be rather arbitrary and without biblical foundation, as, for example, that" God died" (" 0 ill most dread, that God is dead "J, or that" the man Jesus Christ is Almighty."

Can and should and must the concept of the mutual impartation of divine and human essence as it takes place in Jesus Christ be developed further than this point? The decision which we have to make is not an easy one. Is it enough to refer to the fact that it does actually take place in the one person of Jesus Christ as the One who is Himself true salvation and saving truth? Or may it be that this is not enough because, to be quite clear, this reference needs to be more precisely filled out, and is capable of this more precise filling? Is it illegitimate to ask what it is that actually happens in this mutual impartation of divine and human essence in the one Jesus Christ? Or is this not a question which we can and should and must ask, with every prospect of a meaningful answer? The decision is not an easy one because the way to a positive answer to this last question, and therefore to a concrete filling out of the reference, is to some extent blocked by the fact that, although a positive answer is both possible and has actually been given in a very powerful way, yet it has proved to be intolerable-so intolerable that we may find ourselves frightened away from the question which it purports to answer, accepting the reference as such and not making any attempt to fill it out. This is what the older Reformed actually did at this point. They were staggered, not to say horrified, by the development of the mutual impartation uf the divine and human essence in Jesus Christ which they found in the Lutheran

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The Homecoming oj the

SOil 01' 'J

Man

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doctrine of the idionuita They were quite '11' lwe of development ~nd th unwi mg and unable to follow this content to point as ~eaiousl soas t~ g~ve up the whole problem. They were the person of the Mediator, ~he tru: So~UI~f ~o~he f~c~ of thlS lmpartation, to took place, And faced with a choice b an . on of Man, m whom It tbe existing Reformed rejection of th:twee~l the eXlstmg Luthp,ran answer and we h:dormed chose the better part But r~: q em't Ct~ only deCide that the dilemma cannot be evaded D ' ues IOn s I remains whether the two possibilities? , 0 we really have to make a choice between these

W,e must first consider the possible (and given) answer b which we mIght Y t a t'IOn . t ' find h ourselves blocked. It is to thI'S effect . Th"IS Impar consis s m t e fa~t that in the hypostatic union, or the union which d It encloses, there IS such an appropriation ilIum' t' t' t f h d' . , ma IOn an penetraI,O~, no 0 t e Ivme nature by the human but of the human b the dIVIne, that. all the attributes of the divine nature of Jesus 6rrist may also ' I be ascnbed d t t' to His human nature . Th'IS d oes no t , 0f course InVO ve. a es rue IOn or alteration of the human nature b t 't ' that thIS natu . h ' U 1 means . re e::'1?enences t e additional development (beyond its humam~>:) of. acqu.mng a~d having as such all the marks of divinit of partIcipatmg dIrectly m the majesty of God of . . . X' creaturelin f . , enJoymg m 1t s . es~ every per eC!Ion of the uncreated essence of God. And Jesus Chn.st IS tru~ sal~atIo~ and saving truth in so far as this takes place and IS actual m HIm; m so far as in His human nature (as could and was actual~y.said) the Godhead present could directly reveal itself as a ne~ a~d d~vme eleIl?~nt. of life entering the world of men, directl ~ccomphshmg ItS re~onclhatlOn with God and directly imparting to i~ ItS new and eternal life. What we have just sketch d . th L h genus of the communicatio id~o~~tu::z_~t eran doctrine o~ the so-called second he It owes to the fact that the Filius Dei genus majestatzcur~~a name whIch earni communicavit (Hollaz, l.c., III I majestatem suam dzvmam ,!,ssumptae terminology of the early Greek f th ,3, quo 45)· In e.xpress adoptIOn of the stood in this way was described a thers, the, commumcatw zdwmatum as under!"ETOX~ Betas 8wa~Ews, even direc~~y :s 1T:~UfJ7]K7]fE~a,A"I, as P.Et'cD.."I.p" Beta. a~La., as callO of the human essence of Jesus Ch Ewat' a1TO Ewms, ~€01TO'7]a,., as the de~fi­ Frank (Theologie dey Konkordienjormel, ~~~, 4:~63 ApS ~ n3)ot~~ed by F: H. R. now centres on the communi f ' , ' . 9, e mam mterest union--if on the basis of it o~ 0 the natures qUlte apart from the personal Classicus, Col. z. (" In him d~elle~heaiI ISh constantly made to the locus probans 8